Reading through the Burning Empires rules, it looks to me like it's quite possible to have a situation where a PC gets hulled, and the player continues to play the PC as on the Valen side. My question is, when is this OK? Does anyone have any advice for navigating the social contract and play issues that this implies?

Reading through the Burning Empires rules, it looks to me like it's quite possible to have a situation where a PC gets hulled, and the player continues to play the PC as on the Valen side. My question is, when is this OK? Does anyone have any advice for navigating the social contract and play issues that this implies?

Hi Tony. In my opinion, it's okay from the word go. It's a competitive game. Once you've collaboratively burned your world, the gloves come off and the players should understand that. Hulling a character and killing a character may feel different, but they're similar in a lot of ways.

At the same time, you can't just say, "Okay, you're hulled." You have to play the game too. So you've got to capture or seduce him into your power, restrain him, and get the worm in him. That's going to take a variety of Conflict and Building scenes to accomplish, and likely some Color or Interstitial scenes too. And the player is going to have the opportunity to oppose you in those scenes. And he'll have his own scenes to push for escape from the situation you're attempting to impose on him.

OK, so essentially it's OK when you spend the requisite scenes setting it up. The social contract issue I see here is that the player knows there's a danger of their being hulled. So no, "you fall asleep and wake up hulled."

On a related issue, what are your thoughts about the potential social contract issues around psychology? Psychologists can initiate situations that a PC can't simply walk away from, and the consequences of their powers can be very serious in game. Any guidance to handling these situations?

The reason I ask is that my group is about to begin our first Burning Empires series (we played Jyhad previously). The GM has stated that he's going to play the competitive aspect of this game to the hilt, and we're all very psyched about that part of the game. I just want to make sure we have the best possible experience, and that there are no suprises that might sour things for us.

We attempted to address the possible social contract issues of psychology in the rules themselves. I'm fairly confident that if you use the rules and all the means at your disposal there, then you shouldn't have any social contract issues based on it. If you let a psychologist into your game, you should be prepared for the possibility that a character's mind will be changed via psychology.

According to the rules, though, it is not fait accompli. Making a character believe something requires a psychic duel. While psychic duels are stacked in a psychologist's favor, it is entirely possible for a non-psychologist to fend one off. One of the players in one of our playtests (playing the featured character on the cover of the book) did just that.